Fun Friday: Weird Interruptions
Seriously?
Recently I had a rather lurid (yet hilarious) conversation via SMS with two friends while I was in a Zoom meeting at work. One of my friends complained that when the convo started, he was in a meeting with his VP who heard his phone blowing up and asked if he needed to check that, so he did. He was disgusted and embarrassed and had to hide his reaction from his VP.
I mentioned to them it wasn't a big deal even though I was in a Zoom meeting with the camera on me. How did I not crack up and die laughing? Well, not my first time. Here are a few things family and friends have done to me during meetings, presentations, and press interviews:
- The first one I can remember I was sitting in a drive-thru ordering food for everyone in the car - family and a friend. The friend went last, ordered something completely complicated but gave me the order in chunks. I simply repeated each chunk verbatim. His last request was "to go" which I repeated without thinking. The whole car found it hilarious that I'd ask for an order "to go" through the drive-thru. This truly started it.
- During an interview with a reporter for a local news affiliate, my kids went outside and tapped on the window repeatedly. "Please Dad, let us in! We're hungry! Can we have food today?"
- Once in a meeting while I was trying to make an important point, a co-worker sent me message which displayed a pop-up reference to my porn downloading completed. Luckily I wasn't sharing my screen at that exact moment - I had been moments before.
- During a presentation at work where I was sharing my screen, someone popped up a fake Bluetooth message involving the charge state of my supposed butt plug vibrator.
- I've had the usual faces made at me while presenting at conferences, but I've had messages written on paper held up and even messages on screens in large fonts. Nothing like seeing some dude with a sign that said "I'm pregnant you're the dad" or a crude drawing of male genitalia and the words "don't laugh" on it. Other messages have included some variant of "zipper open" and once "check fly peen visible".
- Speaking of genitalia, believe it or not I have had genitalia from both genders flashed at me during conference talks, as well as boobs. On the boob one, I quickly asked "Did you have a question?" and pointed to embarrass the person but was too late to catch them.
- During an interview with a reporter at DEF CON in some bar, I was mic'd up and the reporter had on headphones, so he didn't have to take notes and could concentrate on the questions and my responses. Sitting behind me was a prominent startup CEO who answered or commented in a low voice that was not being picked up by my mic. The answers he nearly whispered behind my head were hilariously wrong, and as he got bored with answering he started making statements about confessing to murder, cannibalism, and laced it with racist random comments (he wasn't actually racist), comments purposely chosen he knew would offend me.
I realize this might encourage some of you idiots out there, but it is the reason I can maintain my composure reasonably well during horrific stimuli. Also note I didn't tell all - there are a few other ways to cause distractions that I have in my back pocket in case I need to retaliate. You have been warned.
